Category Archives: Maine

Saco is Project Drive-In’s first winner

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Saco Drive-In screen at twilight, showing a movie

photo by ignote

As Honda put it in today’s press release, Saco Drive-In (Saco ME) has become the first of five drive-in theaters no longer in jeopardy of closing its doors thanks to Honda’s Project Drive-In. With the end of 35-mm film distribution this year, and the costly switch to digital projection nearing, Honda created Project Drive-In as a national effort to save as many of America’s remaining drive-ins as possible. Honda, which said it received over two million votes, is announcing the winners one day at a time.

The Saco Facebook page is a hub of celebration today. Its manager posted, “I have finally stopped crying! I could not believe it! To think 3 months ago we were sitting around a table talking about how we were going to do this and being so discouraged that there was just literally no way to save it, and then comes this project and your support and your dedication is the reason why we won! Without all of you I can promise this never would have happened. Your energy is what kept me going night after night for the last 30 days with maybe 2hrs of sleep a night you helped push me through it to make sure everyone knew about this project!”

The Portland Press-Herald also picked up the story and added a bit of history. “This year marks the 74th season for the Saco Drive-In, which was originally called the Motor-In Theatre when it was opened in 1939 by Italian immigrant Eugene V. Boragine. It is the second-oldest drive-in theater in the country.” That’s second-oldest still in operation; at least a dozen others opened before the Saco. But I digress.

The Saco is throwing a special celebration party tonight at 6. And Honda adds that “following the September 21 Los Angeles premiere of Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, all drive-ins receiving digital projectors, care of Honda’s Project Drive-In, will have the opportunity to screen the highly-anticipated film before its wide release date.” It’s like winning a new car and getting a really great air freshener too. We’ll keep track of the other four winners in the days to come.

Boston Public Radio discusses New England drive-ins

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Saco Drive-In ticket booth

Saco Drive-In, photo by Joe Shlabotnik

We do love our video here, but Carload also appreciates hearing great audio. Boston Public Radio station WGBH hosted a 14-minute interview with film critic Garen Daly to discuss drive-in memories and the outlook for drive-in theaters in the future. You can listen to it here.

Yet another feature of this New England drive-in roundup is a list of all the surviving drive-ins in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont, along with the dates they were born.

One thing that often strikes me is when someone, as during this interview, brings up the movie American Graffiti when discussing drive-in theaters. The centerpiece of American Graffiti was a drive-in restaurant, but there were no theaters depicted in that movie. Anyway, despite that minor irritant, I think you ought to go listen.

Project Drive-In roundup 2, The Sequel

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In my last post, I began the task of listing every local media report of every local drive-in that’s participating in Honda’s Project Drive-In. Foolishly, I thought that I might gather up all of them in one sitting. When I hit 20 theaters, each with a similar tale of tenuous finance and this lottery-ticket hope for survival, my eyes had glazed over, and I barely had the strength to finish off the post and click Publish.

Two days later, I’m ready again to see how many more drive-in reports I can list. Again, they’re alphabetized by state. And again, if you click through and find a particularly cool detail we should all know about, please leave a comment.

More of your candidates:

Whew again! That’s 20 more drive-ins with local coverage of their Project Drive-In eligibility. I don’t know whether there are 20 more that I haven’t mentioned, but if I spot enough new ones, there may be a third episode of this franchise.